US Election 2020: When Will We Get Election Results?

By Dana Cruz First Posted: Sep 28, 2020 04:34 AM EDT

The U.S. election will happen in a little over a month, and with a pandemic, Americans want to know how soon election results will come.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, may people are fearful of holding an in-person U.S. election. So millions chose to vote by post, which might alter how soon election results are usually made available.

With mail-in and absentee voting at its peak, election results may not be made ready on election night or even the day after, said a Voice of America report.

Officials are also worried that, with the wave of disinformation regarding the U.S. election, voters will see wrong claims about the results after polls close.

What Usually Happens on an Election Night?

According to BBC, different states close their Election Day at different times.

The East Coast is the first one to close at about 7 p.m. local time. From that point, a running total is started as votes from those states get counted.

Presidents in the U.S. also don't win through a national vote. Instead, they go through a series of state-wide races. The winner in each state takes a certain number of electoral college votes.

Media outlets make a projection or "call" a state for a candidate. They do they when they believe that one candidate has an unbeatable lead. Calling a state does not amount to a final result.

The same goes for when the whole election is "called" for a candidate. It does not equate to the official poll count because there are still many votes left to count.

Usually, the election is called on the night itself. There will be a concession speech from the losing candidate, which may not happen this year. This detail will be discussed further later on.

During the last presidential election, it was called for President Donald Trump at 2:30 a.m. EST after winning Wisconsin that put him over the 270 threshold of electoral college votes.

Hillary Clinton won nationwide popular vote during that election, but the electoral college was lost to Trump.

Will Postal Ballots Affect Election Results?

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted an unexpected surge in voters wanting to cast ballots by post.

There are about 80 million mail-in ballots expected to come in. It is more than any other election year's count for mail-in. With this much mail-in ballots, there were concerns that volume will delay everything.

The U.S. Postal Service will have to send out ballots to people, then send them back again to election authorities. The agency has to do this all before deadlines set by states.

How to Count Postal Votes?

Deadlines for postal vote also vary depending on the state.

California accepts votes for as long as they are postmarked by the date, even if ballots arrive weeks later. But Pennsylvania will only include votes received by 8 p.m. local time on election day. This is why counting in California always takes a long time.

Counting of postal ballots also take longer because each vote has to have a signature that is matched with a separate autograph on a registration card.

Some states like Florida begin processing postal votes well before election day. They start verifying signatures and start actual counting on the morning of election day. But most states only start counting after all in-person votes have closed.

The full list of when each state counts postal votes can be seen in the National Conference of State Legislatures website.